


Yellowish

by usandthem



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fiction, High School, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Original Fiction, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-07 10:34:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18408875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usandthem/pseuds/usandthem





	1. Dead Friend

Sometimes you just wanna suck a dick. Not a nice one. Not "my boyfriend and I came home from a great evening and we're gonna do something young and wild". Sometimes you just wanna suck a pathetic dick. Like a thirty-five year old guy with a dead-end marriage and enough money to get by, but not enough to be completely happy with. Just easy to satisfy. Charity work.

Sometimes when I get home from school, I'm not sleepy, which is weird because I'm always sleepy. It's a different kind of tired. A feeling as if you spent two hours trying to fit a new $200 dog-house into your minivan to bring home from Home Depot, and when you finally pull into your driveway you run over your dog. I would imagine it'd be something like that. I was called into the office again. Into that grimy little room where the vice principal lays out all your past crimes and berates you for being a stain upon their clean and proper school. For those of you who've never been in that position, here's how it goes: You step into the dimly lit room alone and vulnerable. A strikingly middle-aged woman greets you and asks you to take a seat. As soon as the door closes, she scowls. She makes it clear how unhappy she is with you. She makes it clear that you are at fault. She tells you you've accomplished nothing. She tells you no one is on your side. She tells you you hurt people and she makes it clear that you have no power, none at all. There's so much you want to say but you're never given the chance, you're choked up, and you're terrified. It wouldn't matter either way. They have no interest in listening to you. They already have their verdict. 

Often times, this exchange ends in tears, yours, to be specific. They ignore this, or worse, put on a facetious smile and tell you to "have a great day". I've been through this a few times, and while it becomes less and less surprising, it never ceases to instill a sense of heavy nihilism. Lucky for them, I have a good family to come home to. Otherwise they'd have another suicide on their hands.

What did I do? I took a picture. 

In photography class, we were told to go to a place of significance and capture the tone it conveys. I went to my friend Shen's house, into his room. It still smelled like him, which was equal parts comforting and unsettling. It took me about an hour to get the picture how I wanted it to be, but it was worth it. One thing about Shen though, he killed himself over winter break. 

I showed his parents the photo when I was done. They teared up, but they loved it. The whole thing felt like him. Compassionate yet unapologetic. Shen stood in the middle of the photograph with his back turned, looking faded like he was only half there. In actuality, it was me in the picture. Even negating the fact that we're both Chinese, we looked quite similar. Barely anyone ever pointed this out to us, however. Didn't want to sound racist I guess. Anyways, it was a pretty damn good picture. And I wrote a damn good statement to go with it too. I figured it would be controversial, but just because he's dead doesn't mean he shouldn't be seen or heard from. You don't really die until people forget you. So yeah, I handed in the pic of my dead friend's room. But hey, Mr. Anderson liked it. He liked it so much he put it up in the office. That's when the storm began. I was told my picture was morbid and tasteless. I was told it was disrespectful to his family and was traumatizing to look at. I was told it wasn't what Shen would have wanted. I was told that if it was seen on the premises again I would be suspended. 

Now I'm at home on my bed. Yeah it wasn't flowers and puppies, but it was important, shouldn't I be able to express– I don't know. I don't know. All that is trivial though, because how dare they— how dare they speak for him. Fucking gross. Disgusting. 

I wanna have sex with someone I don't like. I wanna disintegrate into pieces of bloated dead skin.

 


	2. Juices

It’s frightening how easy it is for anything to be swept under the rug at this school. Following the events of yesterday, the photo was taken down and was never spoken of again. The woman who used a personal tragedy to attack me walked by me in the hall without missing a beat. We were all expected to carry on as usual as if nothing had happened, because for all that mattered, nothing had. The only remnants of yesterday’s cease and desist was my lingering discomfort and the messages I sent my friends bitching about the whole situation. This is how the school handles everything. Everything that would make a bad headline on the local news or would require them to change anything. It’s infuriating.

Upon sharing my frustration with my colleagues, I was met with similar stories. Posts that had to be taken down, complaints that were hushed, thinly veiled threats. Did you hear that someone found a gun in one of the empty lockers last year? Yeah. A specific string of key words will lead you to a tiny article online. I’ll save you the trouble and summarize it. Some kind of handgun was found in an open locker marked 391. No one knows who it belonged to or why it was there and it was turned in to the police immediately upon discovery. Who found it was never mentioned. Nor was the school’s reaction. There was no follow up. If you try to find locker 391 today, you won’t be able to. Just so happens, between 390 and 392, there’s a small section of wall now, with a nonfunctional drinking fountain. No one really noticed or questioned the change. I don’t even remember when it happened, when the whole thing happened. Maybe I’m not the most observant person, but “Gun Found in School” would’ve left some kind of impression. Whatever, man.

So about an hour ago, I was in biology. We were dissecting frogs. They were stiff and rubbery and hard to cut into. I let Cody take the first stab ‘cause I figured it would be fun to see the wimpy nerd kid rip a frog open (we’re friends I guess so I’m allowed to say that about him). He put a little to much force so the frog juices squirted out onto his face. I. Was. On. The. Floor. He’s next to me right now giving me the stink eye. I’m telling him about the Shen thing. He doesn’t see anything wrong with what I did, which says a lot ‘cause Cody never argues with authority.


End file.
